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68 APRIL|chatelaine.comTHEPIVOTALMOMENTINDebra Messing’s career—the one that propelled her from hearing clipped “thank yous” from casting agents to being courted for roles—happened one harrowing day in a Napa Valley Motel 6.She wasn’t even a year out of grad school, belting out “Don’t ain on my arade” at auditions all over New York City when she landed her rst lm role in A Walk in the Clouds, playing the wife of then-mega-star Keanu eeves. ’d never done a movie in my life,” she says. “ was a Our favourite redhead reects on the bumpy road to stardom, nding the perfect role in Smash, the most talked about AVOCADO ON CRACKERS ”It’s the best snack of all time; mush up an avocado and add fresh lemon and salt. Spoon a big tablespoon on a stone-ground cracker, then add more lemon and salt. FAB 70 NTH|chatelaine.comchatelaine.com|APRILHITTING THE BIG TIMEip-synching into a hairbrush on a national Clairol commercial was followed by brief appearances on shows like Seinfeld and NYPD Blue, then two seasons starring in the sitcom Ned & Staceynd in 1998 she found herself cast as race, the messy, frenetic, hilarious best friend of Will. For eight years, the two formed one of prime time’s most groundbreaking, unorthodox and happiest couplings. t was during Will & Grace that Debra married her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Daniel Zelman, and had to farcically hide her subse-quent pregnancy with strategically placed pillows on set. f you watched Will & Grace (and, really, who didn’t?), Debra in person is a bit of a surprise. There is no frantic hand-waving, no teeth-gnashing, no wailing. Now 43, Debra is calm in the way you think maybe you’d be if you started doing yoga all the time. She speaks slowly, carefully, condently. But when the quick smile and the head-thrown-back laugh appear, you get a happy sense of, “h— know her!” eeting glimpse of a much-missed friend. er Will & Grace ended, Debra took The Starter Wife and small roles in lms, but soon decided to take a well-deserved break so she could raise her son oman (now seven). “Doing a sitcom requires so much energy. t’s relentless. t’s satisfying in a way that no other form of acting is, but it takes its toll on some level.” Now she’s back. er latest role, as Julia ouston on the NBC/CTV show Smash, is a homecoming, a dream project that combines many of her greatest loves: singing, Broadway, New York. er character is a Broadway lyricist, working with her creative partner, Tom, to write a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. t home, her character has a husband and teenager and—spoiler alert—a new adopted baby. read it and called my agent back and said, ‘ have to be a part of this.’ From the time was three years old, wanted to be a Broadway musical star. To be able to live in that world and be on a show that was conceived by Steven Spielberg and the executive producers of the lm Chicagot just felt like, ‘lease. et me be a part of this.’ To say that this is a job that fell from heaven and into my lap is no lie.” Best of all for Debra, being a part of a large ensemble cast means she can spend more time with her son. “ have the best of both worlds: am excited to get to work, but now ’m also able to go and pick up my kid from school. just pass the baton to njelica uston or Jack Davenport and say, ‘You’re up!’” MOVING FORWARDDebra has been quiet about the recent news that she and her husband are divorc-ing aer 11 years of marriage, but when we spoke to her there were allusions that her life was about to be dramatically rerouted. “t’s a complicated and scary time,” she says carefully. “ think that if you wrote the fairy tale about it, it would be, oh [Smash] fell in her lap and she moved back to New York, the city she loved and always wanted to live in, and everything was easy. hope that’s the end of the story. But the reality is that have a family that is entrenched in ngeles and a son in school there. The logistical issues of moving and nding a home, a school...it’s daunting.” (Since our interview, Debra and her son have moved to New York.)t the end of the day, her love of her work is nothing compared to how she feels about her son. “Becoming a mother was the most intense game changer on every level. bviously your perspective changes, your priorities change. But the joy it brings, the sorrow, the fears, the worries, the responsibility—it dictates every aspect of your life. But life is also simpler in a weird way. The most complicated thing you can do, think, is to have a child, because it’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week. t never stops. But there’s also a relief that comes—things that aren’t that important just drop away.”nd there it is again: the hearty, happy laugh that sounds so familiar. t’s a laugh that says, yeah, things are a bit scary right now. laugh that says know big things are coming. Born with kinky, mousy brown hair, Debra Messing had a few disastrous dos before nding her famous aming locksTHE BAD PERM “I remember seeing ads with a Breck girl in a magazine, where her hair was perfectly curled and bouncy and shiny. I took the picture into the local salon and said ‘I want it like this.’ After hours and hours of those perm chemicalsit was so intense, I can still smell itmy hair was a tragedy beyond description. I just remember sitting there with my mouth agape, looking in the mirror. And she kept saying, ‘Oh, look how prettyyou are!’ in this panicky voice. I have blacked out the period after that. I have no memory of going to school with that hair or how long it took to grow out. It’s for the best.”THE BUZZ CUT“I was at New York University, and I decided I needed a changea little edge, a little sophistication. At the time, Linda Evangelista was one of the great supermodels. She had the shortest hair I’d ever seen, and I thought, ‘What could go wrong?’ The plan was that I was going to get a Betty Boop and wear the biggest hoops I could nd. So I get that done. I came home and my father looked at me and said, ‘Oohhhh, I don’t like that.’ I thought he was going to cry. You can’t do much when you’ve shaved your head, and I realized that unless I put on lipstick and big earrings, I would be mistaken for a boy. So whether I was wearing sweatpants or heading out for a bagel, I always looked like Beyoncébut 10 years ago.” 2 3 7 6 4 5 airSCARESASTON/NBCU PHOTOK/CP IESEATURES. 3. WART/NBC/NBCU PHOTOES. 4. BROOFEATURES. 5. ©PICTUREHOUSECOURTESY EVOLLECTIONCORBIS. 7. ©WROS. /COURTESY EVOLLECTION RACE(1) In the series nale of Will & Grace. (2) On the red carpet at the Women in Film awards, 2010. (3) With eanu Reeves in A Walk in (4) Chatting eneres. (5) On the set of Will & Grace. (6) Playing Julia in with Christian Borle. (7) With Daniel Zelman at Open Season premiere.Eat well 80 percent of the time and forgive the other 20 percent.